I am very excited. It’s only a week now before I start teaching my course on crystals at University of the Third Age (U3A) Murraylands. Much time has been spent in deciding how to go about it and which crystals to choose to begin the course, but I think I am ready now.

Fluorite is an absolutely beautiful gem, with all its lovely colours blending together. It is a psychic shield and protects us. All of its colours are great for aura cleansing. Clear Fluorite guards against psychic attack, blue calms and protects the emotions and restores emotional balance. Yellow Fluorite has purity of spirit and green is excellent for all healing. Purple Fluorite will strengthen mystical insight, psychic awareness and opens the third eye.

This is a wonderful protective stone, especially in the psychic realm. It is a good stone to use when meditating or for ritual work as it will focus your concentration.

This is a great favourite of mine and I use it often. It has many uses, more than I will put down here, but they are available in “The Definitive Crystal, Gemstone & Mineral Reference Guide”. This book covers over 300 different crystals, gemstones and minerals and is…

Blind Faith … the dictionary tells us this means ‘belief without true understanding, perception, or discrimination’ Personally I think you have to add to that and say believing in something you can not prove scientifically, the hard proof that seems to have us all believe.

So is your faith in Paganism Blind or do you truly understand what it is you believe in? … How many of us just leap in because it’s trendy, alluring, tempting or do we actually research our God and Goddess and know the Archangels and realise the implications of any Magick work?

Scientific proof : if we start here for any faith/religion/belief system there really isn’t any ‘be all and end all’ scientific proof! There is always someone who can explain away our theories and explainations. So do we have faith in things we can find evidence of, that satisfies our own requirements, because lets face it, we all have differing levels of requirements to believe in something or to advocate our beliefs with conviction and passion, and what is evidence? Consistent stories by many people, stories that can have elements of truth for all of us, something we can cling to in order to believe? … and what is Truth. A favourite quote of mine is that Truth has 3 sides, yours, mine and the truth and I firmly believe that is the case. We all have filters from our experiences, be it good or bad, in our life, our feelings, our own perception as our minds put them together and we all have very unique filters so it stands to reason that our faith can be both blind and not blind. Blind in that our filters will not allow some things through, and not blind to the things we do take in that cement our faith in life and our chosen beliefs.

This is something that is universal, it exists in all life forms with the capacity to think, from animals to humans alike. One persons junk is another man’s treasure is more prophetic that realised.

So for Pagans is blind faith part of our existence? Of course it is. We all have our preferred God’s and Goddess’ and we all have our preferred practices. The differences from each of us are what make our beliefs so eclectic and progressive. Of course we have our ancestry, our history and our fundamentals, but all in all we all have one goal in mind …. one rule, if you will, to follow .. ‘be it harm none, do what ye will’

There have been many discussions on how Christianity and other religions have been borne from Paganism. How intolerant their followers are of us and other religions. How blind their followers are at times, and we marvel at how they can believe and be so passionate at some of their causes, but isn’t it true of everything that we are just as intolerant? We are just as judgemental of the other religions at times? … not all of us of course but there are some or these discussions wouldn’t occur.

My message to anyone reading this week is this … Blind Faith exists, in Paganism, in all religions and in life everywhere. Tolerance for others and what others believe in is the key to peace. We all need to understand that our filters will give us all a unique perspective on life and beliefs and that each individual will believe according to their filters, more often subconsciously that consciously but none the less we are guided by what information our filters let through.

What are your Filters? … do you know or acknowledge them, do they hinder or help your faith in your chosen path whatever it may be?

Blind Faith does exist in Paganism for all of us, of that I have no doubt, but not in the black and white traditional sense of just believing for the sake of believing. Blind Faith exists in the true dictionary meaning … ‘belief without true understanding, perception, or discrimination’

I hope that there is no one out there who follows the path of Paganism because it is the trendy, alluring, tempting thing to do, I would hope they would seek their own evidence, proof if you will, and something that flows through their filters and gives them solidarity in their chosen path not just something to brag about to their peers for brownie points.